Sunday, May 24, 2009

"30 days on minimum wage"

GARETH AND AMY WATCHED...

The guy who made Super Size Me has a TV series in the states called 30 days where he (or someone else) gets to live in someone else's shoes for 30 days. Here is the description of the first episode...

"Morgan Spurlock and his fiancĂ©e Alex leave their fabulous New York lifestyles behind for the heart of the Midwest, Columbus, Ohio. Morgan and Alex work at multiple minimum wage jobs for 30 days earning $5.15 per hour. They get to experience first hand the struggles minimum wage earning families face as Morgan’s niece and nephew come to live with them."

It was a pretty painful experience. We saw a lot of ourselves in them - every argument them had we'd had (in principle) at some point - "Hey i walk to work so we can save money and you just wasted $1.20 on doughnuts"

But i'd like to think we have moaned less. Boy did they moan and they only did it for 30 days. ONB has now been going for 12 months! I guess there are several things that make it easy(ier) for us to cope with it all...

1. It is our choice - we are choosing to do this we could stop tomorrow if we wanted to
2. We have jobs we enjoy and find fulfilling
3. We live in NYC not Columbus, Ohio

So it is heads down and ploughing forward with the plan.
___________
Morgan: "I have seen how hard the struggle is. I have been here. And I only did it for a month, and there's people who do this their whole lives."

1 comment:

Steve said...

You also have health insurance - which I seem to recall was a biggie in the show... and you're right you have the luxury of this being a choice rather than a trap ($5.15 FOREVER).... I've done poverty and I've done self imposed poverty, neither is nice, but the difference is hope and optimism... when you're doing the second you can look forward to the day that it's all over... when you're stuck in the first that feeling only lasts as long as it takes to scratch off the lottery ticket